Open Source Medicine

  Salvator Iaconesi is a 39-year-old artist who teaches digital design at La Sapienza University of Rome. Iaconesi also has brain cancer.

Credit to: WE ARE PI

  However, instead of just letting one or two doctors prescribe a course of treatment and following it with high hopes Iaconesi did something different. He published his medical records online and opened his life to the world. He set up La Cure to allow anyone and everyone to review his case, his medical records, and his treatment for review and comment.
  Open source software has been around since the early 80's when Richard Stallman helped launch the GNU Project. Open source essentially means no one owns the information, data, or piece of work. Many companies have used this format to help develop many of their products including operating systems and smart phone software. But no one had ever thought about using this same open approach to their medical treatment.
  The response to this project has been overwhelming. An art collective has used his brain scans for a projection map during their concert, 35 videos have been produced using the images of the tumor, 600 poems have been written and uploaded to the website for Iaconesi, and about 15,000 testimonies of people who have or have had have been posted on the website as well.
  60 doctors have contacted him through the website to try and give opinion and advice on how to continue with treatment. But what is more amazing is that 40 of these 60 doctors have been spontaneously reviewed by at least 500 other visitors to the the website. Iaconesi says he has also received 50,000 remedies and treatment options have been sent to him.
  Iaconesi says that all of this has helped him formulate his own treatment, which goes beyond typical medicine.  He plans to incorperate a variety of treatment options including, surgery, oncology, homeopathy, Chinese medicine, Hebraic Esoterism, diet, and lifestyle.
  Iaconesi has yet to complete his full treatment but he is hopeful and looks forward to seeing this technological and social approach used more often when treating patients.

#GazaUnderAttack

  A group of more than 50 protestors gathered outside the Atlanta Israeli consulate at 4 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon.

Photo by: Cody Skinner

  Those who gathered in support of Palestine were demonstrating against Israel's continuing bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Israel has been launching targeted airstrikes and bombings on the Gaza Strip in aims to disarm and dismantle the Hamas leadership.
  "Israel has been launching total war against Palestine in a way that undermines the peace process," said Phillip Alaf, an Atlanta organizer for the International Socialist Organization. "We hope that this brings together a network of people who can respond in the future as this crisis unfolds."
  "I'm here because of outrage," said Woodstock restaurant owner Imad Nassereddin. "I'm here to protest the continued bombardment of Gaza."
  "Just like the United States was helped by France in the fight for independence, I think the United States could help the peoples of Israel and Palestine fight their respective extremists and win peace," said Kennesaw State University Assistant Professor Dr. Kenneth White. "The main concern right now, I think, is that the conflict will escalate into more serious violence or spread beyond Gaza."

Photo by Cody Skinner

  "Israel has been responding to the missles shot by Gaza and that is what started the 
Operation Pillar of Defense in the first place," said Life University Student Josh Oppenheim, who was in a bomb shelter in Israel during the interview. "And Israel is targeting only the spots that Hamas is firing rockets from but they hide their silos in residential areas, unfortunately its on purpose

so there civilians get hurt when we retaliate."
  Cease-fire talks have been discussed between the two nations but an agreement has yet to be reached.  In the meantime both the Israeli Defense Forces and the Hamas have continued to fire missiles and rockets. Many fear a ground invasion is imminent.

***UPDATE***
12:40 EST Nov. 22

  A ceasefire was struck yesterday that went into effect last evening at 9 p.m. in Gaza and Israel.  As of now over 140 Palestinians have dies in the conflict and five Israelis. The ceasefire is being observed, nervously, while discussions become focused on Israel maybe easing it's blockade around Gaza.
  Many international officials attended the talks hosted by Egypt including the Secretary
General of the UN, the US Secretary of State, and Foreign Ministers from Turkey and Germany. However, Egypt's Intelligence Chief is credited with making the most progress while speaking with representatives from Israel, the Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad.

Internaltional Telecommunications Union

  If you have read a few of my posts you may have realized I am an active supporter of internet freedoms domestically and abroad.  I was excited to see the failure of SOPA and PIPA in the US.  These pieces of regulation would have begun a downhill slide towards the fracturing of the World Wide Web.
  The internet; it has spawned societies entirely encased in digital form, brought down governments (read my last post), forged international relationships, created cultures, all on it's own.
  But all this could be thrown to an abrupt stop if we, the internet users are not careful.  I believe that a free and democratic society depends upon the free exchange of ideas and information. Without that we are limited by whatever ruling power controls the flow and distribution of information.

Thanks to New World Order War

   Right now the next threatening piece of regulation that could overburden the Internet information highway is the ITU and the next international conference.
  The ITUwas founded in 1865 and became a part of the United Nations in 1947.  It's main goal has been to regulate and develop international communications world wide.  It has proved many great communication resources to third world and developing nations and has done some excellent things to further the progress of international communication networks.
  But the problem is that it is not a democratic community.  Only certain countries in the UN have voting power on the ITU and many of those countries have horrible track records with internet freedoms (Russia and China are both voting members).
  I'm not sure what can be done to battle this encroaching regulation of internet freedoms, but I recognize the necessity for a free and open exchange of ideas in today's world.

 

Property of Fight For The Future and AccessNow.org

How Were There Protests Before the Internet?

  Earlier this week thousands took to the streets in Argentina's capitol, Buenos Aires, to protest President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.  The protesters are trying to highlight issues in the Argentinian government such as corruption, rising inflation, and high levels of crime.
  However, this is not an international affairs blog, nor is it a blog dedicated to the furthering of global protests.  Here I discuss the use of social media and new media, and their implications.  This protest is not only the largest anti-government protests in the last decade, but it was organized with the use of social media.
  But now a days what protest isn't?  Everything from the revolution in Egypt to the organization of the Free Libyan Army have been propelled by the use of social media.  Look here, where this child was named Facebook in honor of the role the website played in the Egyptian Revolution.

All Rights to the Anonymous Group

  The Occupy Movement in the US and the rest of the world speaks for itself.  Some activist organizations have even based all of their protests online; Anonymous and LulzSec are both excellent examples of this.  Social, political and military movements are using the world wide web as more than just a source of information, or a way to broadcast their message.  It is a battleground where wars for equal rights, the oppression of others, recruitment for militarized NGOs, and the spread of beliefs.
  So what does the use of the tubes mean for political activists or social movements in the future?  Well it means we are going to see a lot more happenings like the one below...

 

All Rights to Invisible Children

Six Degrees of Seperation (linguistics edtition)

  So the proverbial 'scientists' have done it again.  Researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University are using computer software to track the development of language, and colloquialism, across the US.
  The BBC published this article, written by Phillip Ball, recently exploring the work of Jacob Eisenstein, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech.  Eisenstein is using Statistical Analysis techniques to analyze around 40 million messages from about 400,000 different users to track where different terms, like "bruh" or "af", originated from and have moved to.

Image from Visual Complexity

  In the case of "bruh," the term originated in the southeast US and moved to southern California due to it's usage on Twitter.  The result of tracking terms like these is a representational map of how different slang terms and emoticons have moved across the US, perhaps even across international borders.  Think of movies where detectives use string and different photographs to track suspects in an organized crime case (they may still do this)
  This new system of organizing and analyzing data could help linguistics and other researches in many ways.  The entertainment industry could now localize productions to specific geographical locations.  Law enforcement could use this to track different slang or gang terms across the country to track where gangs are located and spreading to.  Linguists could use the information to project the spread of colloquialisms across geographical lines and gain a better understanding of how culture develops.

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